EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POPULATION

France (Paris) 65

MARCH 1996 - VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1

96.65.1 - English - Jon Anson, Department of Social Work, and Avinoam MEIR, Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 84105 Beer Sheva (Israel) Religiosity, nationalism and fertility in Israel (p. 1-25)

The present paper seeks to re-evaluate explanations for the apparently high level of Jewish fertility in Israel. We suggest that previous explanations, based on ethnic origin or religiosity, are sociologically incomplete, and substitute well established empirical correlational associations for theoretically grounded explanations. We argue that Israel's high fertility stems, directly, from the form and salience of nationalist sentiments in the Israeli conscience collective, which in turn derives from Israel's special position in the Middle East and in the world-economy. Using voting returns from Israel's proportional vote elections, we classify census statistical areas by religiosity and their support for radical nationalist parties. We show that area-level fertility is a function of nationalist support and the area standard of living, and that once these are controlled the effect of religiosity is insignificant. We therefore conclude that the statistical association between fertility and religiosity in Israel is spurious, and that much of the religiosity recorded in fertility surveys is an expression, in consciousness and in the mode of daily living, of a strongly felt nationalist sentiment. (ISRAEL, FERTILITY DETERMINANTS, NATIONALISM, RELIGIOSITY

96.65.2 - English - N. Panush and E. Peritz, The Hebrew University, Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Jerusalem (Israel)

Potential demography: A second look (p. 27-39)

In the late forties Hersch (1944) and Mentha (1948) introduced, respectively, the concepts of "Potential years of life" (PYL) and "potential years of life lost" (PYLL). During the seventies the PYLL idea was rediscovered and applied to a variety of public health issues, with some rather drastic simplifying assumptions. It is argued that PYL, PYLL, and their variants and derived measures are still useful tools in demographic practice. (DEMOGRAPHY, METHODOLOGY, LIFE POTENTIAL)

96.65.3 - English - D. T. Rowland, Population Studies Program, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, The Australian National University, Acton, ACT 0200 (Australia) Population momentum as a measure of ageing (p. 41-61)

This paper aims to show that the concept of population momentum clarifies the nature of the process of population ageing and provides a basis for comparative research through time and between countries. The paper discusses the role of momentum in age-structure change during the demographic transition and examines trends in total and age-specific momentum in the demographic study of ageing arises from its focus on cohort flow, from the insight it provides into the causes and consequences of ageing and from its ability to identify variations in the process through time. (DEMOGRAPHY, METHODOLOGY, GROWTH POTENTIAL, DEMOGRAPHIC AGEING)

96.65.4 - English - John R. WilmOth, Department of Demography, University of California, Berkeley, CA (U.S.A.), and Hans LUNDSTRŠM, Statistics Sweden, Karlav‰gen 100, S-11581 Stockholm (Sweden)

Extreme longevity in five countries. Presentation of trends with special attention to issues of data quality (p. 63-93)

Data on the maximum age at death and other indicators of extreme longevity are assembled for five countries (Sweden, England & Wales, France, Japan, and the United States) over various time periods. The raw data are shown in both graphical and tabular formats. Two types of measures are presented: the extreme ages at death reported for a given year (i.e., the maximum, second, third, and fourth highest), and the upper percentiles of the age distribution of deaths by year. The analysis demonstrates that the upper tail of the age distribution of deaths has moved steadily higher over a period of at least 130 years in Sweden. Similar trends are observed (over shorter time periods) for other countries, although in many cases it is argued that the raw data are flawed due to misstatement (in particular, exaggeration) of age at death. (LIFE SPAN, COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS, MORTALITY TRENDS)

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